Nobody expected the two Mafia goons who snatched Sterling to buy Big Bob’s property at the sheriff’s sale. They got it cheap, too, with a well-placed bribe to a deputy sheriff and regular customer. Nobody expressed surprise when the goons re-opened the illegal bar and restaurant as a Hooters-type house of macaroni.

Big Bob’s Booze and Burgers became Bafungool Pasta, a take-off in the word vaffanculo which means screw off in Italian. The goons thought the name was hilarious. Nobody spoke Italian, anyway. Redneck peasants still showed up in droves and the Mafia goons, half-brothers from different Irish mothers, started rolling in the dough. The boys stayed calm as long as people kept shoveling into their yaps the all-you-can-eat specials with red, white and what the menu called “blew” sauce.

Ingredients for the seasoned house sauce (which was actually red) remained a secret. The white power patrons considered the colorful flavoring a nod to patriotism (red, white and “blew”) and didn’t grasp the purposeful misspelling of the color. In turn, the goons doubled over with laughter because only they knew the mystery additive.

Let’s say a customer compliments the goons and says, “minghia, dis ‘blew’ sauce is definitely special.’ ”

Grazie, the goons say.

So tangy.

Grazie.

Stewed veals, it’s gotta be stewed little baby veals dat makes the sauce so succulent, the customer says.

I’ll never tell, one of the goons says with a wink.

Then whichever goon accepted the compliment would go to the kitchen and laugh so hard he cried. Nobody ever complained about the gamey taste because these boys were mobsters who didn’t take kindly to criticism of any kind and, besides, patrons had gotten used to Big Bob’s grilled coyote. Compared to the stringy wild beast, this blew sauce was heaven.

Well, actually more like Hell.

Raymond the Godfather made the sauce. Not in the kitchen, mind you, but the sauce itself. The Godfather made the sauce because the Godfather was in the sauce. Remember the old rumors about the sausage? This was a brand new take on spicy meatballs. Because Raymond failed to show the brothers basic La Costra Nostra respect, they beat him over the head with a calamari hammer, chopped him up, ran him through the meat grinder, filled freezer bags with Godfather parts and added him to the sauce whenever somebody ordered the house special.

So popular was the sauce the goons figured the body would disappear completely in a few weeks.

He did it to himself, said the head goon the day they tenderized the Godfather’s head.

Yeah, he blew it, said the other.

Voila!

Good old-fashioned American entrepreneurship gave birth to the now famous “blew” sauce.

Raymond’s death effectively ended the local crime family. The Mafia of old didn’t matter much anymore. The goons weren’t up to the job of running a linguini joint so they eventually burned down the restaurant for the insurance money and turned in their track suits for bathing suits.

The goons retired to Ft. Lauderdale, a sunny place where pleasant memories from other times lived in their garbanzo bean-sized brains like sand crabs in their shorts. Within days both goons caught the coronavirus at a topless laundromat and succumbed to the disease within weeks.

Unlike the Godfather who rested in pieces, the goons at least rested in peace.